Well, the clock is ticking down rapidly on our first ever IndieGoGo Campaign..We have had some support. (Thank You) but are still away from our goal. We may be the first ever cheminformatics app that has tried crowd funding as a means of support. Then again ODDT is also free!

Now here is a crazy idea ..instead of folks submitting 6 page SBIR and STTR packages, what if the NIH got applicants to submit to a crowd funding site. For one it really focuses you on value proposition. So now instead of a study section scoring grants, they gave a group of scientists virtual money and they vote with their money. The second stage of the approach would give scientists the option to make the campaigns public after the voting stage and other groups outside (non profits, VCs etc) could then go through the proposals and seek out good ideas that may have missed out on funding from the voting round. Anyone at the NIH thinking of overhauling the system? For my mind IndieGoGo is the way to go..

The campaign prompted us to prepare lots of posters, available on figshare and Slideshare. We also have a paper on the App in press at Molecular Informatics..( drop me a line if you would like a reprint).

Alex Clark has added new Topics and a ticker tape and we have another new Topic in the works for the next version.

Go on and drag yourself away from the Olympics and support our little effort. If nothing else its keeping us innovating in cheminformatics.